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My aim is to install ALL packages I need for a project to a non-default location.

First install pip3 then virtualenv (I am OK with virtualenv being installed in the default location like /usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages):

sudo apt install python3-pip

# sudo if necessary
pip3 install virtualenv

Then create a root folder for all the virtual environments (this is optional):

# cd to somewhere
mkdir myvirtualenvs

Next a specific virtual environment can be created:

cd myvirtualenvs

sudo virtualenv --no-site-packages my-project-virtualenv

Note that --no-site-packages is now the default behavior, meaning my-project-virtualenv is not going to use the global python packages (i.e. packages in /usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages). It’s OK to remove this option in my case. Double check by virtualenv --help.

Activiate this virtual environment:

. my-project-virtualenv/bin/activate

Install packages by pip3. E.g.:

pip3 install scikit-learn==0.19.1

Caution: if you are not going to use sudo, the above command works well. skleran package will be directly installed to myvirtualenvs/my-project-virtualenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages. HOWEVER, if you need sudo, even when your are in the activated environment, it will be installed to the global destination (i.e. /usr/lib/python3.5/site-packages).

An explanation I found is from stackoverflow: How to install a package inside virtualenv?:

When you use sudo pip install package, you are running Virtualenv as root, escaping the whole environment which was created, and then, installing the package on global site-packages, and not inside the project folder where you have a Virtual Environment, although you have activated the environment.

In this case, you need to specify the destination:

sudo pip3 install scikit-learn==0.19.1 -t myvirtualenvs/my-project-virtualenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages

Check if it’s installed inside the activated environment by python3 -c "import sklearn".

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